Daniel Ricciardo completed 45 laps of the Bahrain International Circuit during the first day of the first in-season test of the season on Tuesday, but saw his days running curtailed early with a power unit issue on his RB13.
The Red Bull Racing driver finished third fastest but the most important thing for the Australian, it was a good day of data gathering, even though it meant a boring day behind the wheel. He also was able to get some useful data with the 2017 Pirelli tyres.
Ricciardo admitted it was interesting to see just what the set-up changes did for the performance of the car during the day, with the team making bigger changes in testing than they would do during a normal race weekend.
“It was a good outing for the aero department – we did a lot of data gathering in the first hour, which all went to plan, and that’s important for the guys, even though for a driver it’s not the most thrilling thing, as you’re just trundling around really!” said Ricciardo.
“After that we did a few runs on the soft tyre and made a few mechanical changes, which were interesting, we then completed a couple of runs on the supersoft. I think we discovered a few things there.
“You do try some bigger set-up steps than you might do on a race weekend and it was interesting to see what the results of those changes were.
“We were planning a few long runs in the afternoon but obviously the power unit issue prevented that.”
